The Denver restaurant community gathered this morning at Ace to remember Curtis. Here are some snapshots from the service:

Hula hoops at rest.

Josh Wolkon opened the service by inviting the 100-plus T-shirt-clad people gathered in the ping-ping hall to join him in three cleansing breaths. “This is not a traditional setting or traditional attire. Grab a hula hoop and go give it a spin.”

Today at Ace.

Joe Davis, Caldwell’s partner: “For his spirit to live on, do something Curtis did — see a burlesque show at Lannie’s, go to a Ren Fair, do the hula hoop or dance with flags.”

Remembering Curtis Caldwell at Ace.

Matt Selby, former Vesta chef: “He called chilaquiles “chill-OCK-u-lees.” We should all recognize people who do that much good just by being themselves.”

Curtis Caldwell’s memorial spilled outside into a sunny day.

Brianna Friedman, Vesta coworker, sang a moving version of “I hope you dance.”

Mark Hickman, friend and neighbor: “We are all very lucky to have met a star before it ascended.”

Wolkon spoke of how difficult it has been to carry on at the restaurants the past couple of weeks: “Let it be a solid reminder to be compassionate — to each other and to our guests. He kept our sauces fresh and our desserts creative.”

Under the Sun, a new brewpub from the people who brought the Front Range Mountain Sun, Southern Sun, and Vine Street Pub, opens Friday. Also, most of the brewpubs also begin Stout Month at 4:20 on Friday. (Mountain Sun)

Great news, beer lovers.

1) Under the Sun, a new brewpub, opens Friday in South Boulder. The pub, by the Boulderites who brought the Front Range Mountain Sun, Southern Sun, and Vine Street Pub, is anchored by a wood-fired oven. Housemade pretzels, flatbreads, local and organic meats, 30 taps – it has great potential. The pub officially opens Friday, but has been serving meals and slinging suds off and on for the past few weeks. The roast chicken – cooked in the wood-fired oven – is apparently exceptional.

2) The same empire, minus Under the Sun, launches Stout Month at 4:20 on Friday (nudge, wink). Love stout? Then February is your kind of month at the brewpubs.

I’m hoping to try all of the stouts this year. I won’t grow mutton chops, but if you do, and you show up at one of the Stout Month pubs, the first pint is on the house. You can grow a mullet, instead, if you can’t grow chops.

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Boulderites have devoured Steve Scott’s ambrosial French breads – pictured are three of them – for awhile, but he is moving his operations to Denver in June, when he opens Babette’s in The Source food emporium. (Douglas Brown)

Details about The Source, a food emporium slated to open in the River North neighborhood in June, are beginning to emerge.

Steve Scott, a baker whose moist, crusty, and addictive French breads have captivated Boulderites, is leaving the college town for Denver, where he will open Babette’s, a bakery in The Source. Babette’s, which will sell breads, brioche, croissants and a handful of sandwiches, will probably be the most open-to-the-public bakery Denver has ever seen – Scott envisions patrons standing just feet from the bakers and their machines.

“I want this to feel like we are baking for that one single person, like it’s someone’s home,” said Scott, a former professional cyclist who has been baking for 17 years. “My philosophy is you need to see the baker baking. I view this as building community around the bakery.”

Scott also hopes to hire a pastry chef, and build a pastry program around the chef.

Before the crew fills the local joint with lights, microphones and cameras, TV food show producers find their locations by calling local writers and picking their brains until there’s nothing left. They make deals about allowing us on the set when the crew gets here. They ask us to sit on the information so that the celebrity host isn’t accosted by fans.

Guy Fieri getting miked. (Kristen Browning-Blas/The Denver Post)

We play along, trusting that we’ll have a good story as soon as the production wraps. That’s what happened when Bobby Flay shot here, same for Andrew Zimmern. But for some reason, The Food Network vetoed the invitation to meet Guy Fieri, the backwards-sunglass-wearing host of “Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives” while they were shooting yesterday at the Denver Biscuit Company. “Closed set.” What a way to say thanks to the locals.

Still, more eateries are planned, such as the Square Grouper, a Cajun-focused spot that on May 10 will take over the space currently occupied by Elevation Restaurant and Bar (whose employees insist is moving to another location after it closes on March 31).

Square Grouper won the much-coveted copper kettle and bragging rights for a year at Soupskol, the soup-cooking contest that has been apart of Winterskol for ten years. Pretty impressive for an eatery that doesn’t even exist yet.

As one of the judges (dirty job, yes), I was impressed with the caliber of the soups. Fellow evaluator Susan Cross and I were tasked with slurping more than 20 entries during this event held outdoors in single-digit temperatures that Friday night, and hundreds of locals, as well as one rather inebriated Irishman looking for love, came out to judge, as well.

Reader Fred Fisher took issue with my review of TAG Burger Bar Wednesday morning. I had a middling experience, but the service and most of the food was decent enough to give it 1 1/2 stars, which in the Post’s rating system means the restaurant, in total, was good to very good.

Fisher had a far less pleasant experience, to wit:

“I have to say that the review was way too kind for 1.5 stars. My wife and I just moved into the neighborhood and were pleasantly surprised to find what seemed like a nice place close by. We tried it about a week ago and made a vow almost as soon as our food was served that we would never go back. The burger was okay, the pickle was dried out and shriveled, the french fries were lukewarm and soggy, the music was too loud for conversation, and the whole deal was expensive. NO one is paying attention to quality at this place. The only strength was the nice young waitperson who did not have a clue about how bad the food really was– but was sweet. Food stinks and we will never go back or recommend it to anyone.”

When “Top Chef” judge Gail Simmons comes to Colorado Jan. 24-27, she plans to ski, cook and hang out with friends.

As one of the celebrity hosts of the second annual Beaver Creek Food & Wine Weekend, Simmons will join chefs John Besh, Alex Seidel and Spike Mendelsohn for a more intimate, and snowy, version of the Aspen Food & Wine Classic, held in June.

A lifelong skier, she’s a sure bet to win the Celebrity Chef Ski Race fundraiser/brunch Jan. 27. You can bid ($175 to start) for a spot on her team and a place at the table afterwards in the Beaver Creek Chophouse.

“I have been missing Colorado in the wintertime,” said Simmons, who started at Food & Wine magazine in 2004 and oversaw the Aspen event until 2009. (Now she appears as a speaker.) In a phone interview, the author of “Talking With My Mouth Full” (Hyperion, 2012) offered some insight into her seemingly glamorous gourmet lifestyle.

Q: How do you balance eating for a living and looking good on TV?
A: Tom Colicchio never gets that question. (He’s a fellow judge on “Top Chef.”)Read more…

Trillium restaurant in Denver is hosting its latest Scandanavian-themed dinner Tuesday night — this one serves up Danish food prepared by guest chef Jenna Johansen. Johansen has worn the toque at Ventura Grille and Ocotillo, but TV viewers know her from Bravo’s “Around the World in 80 Plates,” which aired in 2012.

The menu reads like a fine repast for a cold January night. To wit:

An amuse-bouche of chicken liver and bacon mousse on rye beer bread, accompanied by a Lips of Faith beer from Brewery Vivant.

A crab and cabbage salad (!) with kale, horseradish vinaigrette and a goat gouda crouton, with “Old Vines” Riesling Hohenrain from Germay.

Mashed potatoes with bacon, apple and onion chutney with a Marsanne-Roussanne wine from the Rhone region.

An intermezzo of rosemary, juniper and citrus sorbet with candied lemon.Read more…

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These potato chips were made with Rooster potatoes, a variety of spud grown in the UK for decades, and sold under the brand Albert Bartlett. (Douglas Brown)

I’m with Daniel Asher, the chef at the Highland restaurants Root Down and Linger: Potatoes can be exciting.

Spuds are especially thrilling, for me, when somebody like Asher is the one transforming the knobs of starch into other things: fries and chips, gnocchi, soup.

Right now, Asher is using a new variety of potato, called Rooster, in his dishes at Linger and Root Down (they are the first restaurants in the state to use them). The taters, popular in the UK for decades (they are the No. 1 potato in the Great Vortex of Potato Love – Ireland) and sold under the Albert Bartlett brand, are for the first time available in the United States, at WalMart stores in Colorado and Georgia. And Colorado farmers in the San Luis Valley are growing them.